Critical Essay by Anne W. Passel

In this excerpt, Passel describes the contrapuntal structure of Shirley, in which three voices explore possible solutions to life's problems through religion, work, and love respectively.

In Shirley, Charlotte Brontë has written a novel with a highly organized three-voiced contrapuntal structure. The novel has seldom been viewed as an organic unity; more often critics consider it to be a gathering together of dissimilar threads of plot. Shortly after its publication, such an attitude was expressed by G. H. Lewes in his severe critical attack in the Edinburgh Review in 1850. Lewes was looking for an echo of the message the world had found in Jane Eyre, and Shirley is not a second Jane Eyre. The critic expressed...